Page 85 of Hang the Moon
He sighed and sank down on her sofa. “I wasn’t exactly expecting to run into you.”
“Inmyapartment? At seven fifteen on a Sunday morning?”
“When you put it like that...”
She flung a throw blanket at him. “Cover yourself, please.That’s too much thigh for me.” Her eyes widened. “And since when do you have atattoo?”
He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, clutching it in front of his throat. “Don’t start. I know all about your butterfly.”
She flushed neon and said nothing.
“You’re up early,” he added.
She set her coffee on the table. “I could say the same to you.”
He scratched his eyebrow. “This is awkward.”
He tucked the blanket tighter around his shoulders, praying the flap of his boxers hadn’t parted before he could cover himself.
Darcy cocked her head. “Annie still asleep?”
His ears burned. “Yup.”
“Are youblushing?”
“Likely.”
Her shoulders shook as she laughed at him, taking too much pleasure in his embarrassment.
“Can you... I don’t know, spare me the teasing? Please. I haven’t had any coffee yet. I’m at an automatic disadvantage.”
“In your dreams.” She stood and crossed over to her kitchen. “I won’t spare you the teasing but I will make you coffee.”
“Bless you.”
Her coffeemaker whirred to life, the crunch of beans filling the air. As appealing as coffee was, and as much as he loved his sister, he was sorely tempted to sneak down the hall and crawl back in bed beside Annie for a few blissful hours of respite.
Darcy returned, mug in hand. “Here.” Her lips twitched. “Do I need to check Annie for fangs? You have a hickey the size of Texas on your throat. You’re not in high school, for crying out loud.”
No, but sometimes Annie made him feel like he was. Like he was a kid discovering everything for the first time, things he’d never felt before. He liked it. Helovedit, loved that everything with Annie felt shiny and new, like the sunlight streaming in through the window. Golden.
He brought the mug to his lips. The hot coffee was a touch over-extracted for his taste, Darcy’s beans a little too finely ground, resulting in a bitter brew. But he wasn’t about to complain, certainly not when the coffee was a nice buffer from the embarrassment. “Shut up.”
“So, what happened last night?”
He coughed, spraying coffee spittle against the back of his hand.
“Notthat.” Darcy wrinkled her nose. “I can add two and two together perfectly well,thanks. When I asked Annie about you inviting her to a wedding, all I heard was a lot of protesting about how she wasjust your plus-one.”
“I guess... something changed between us.”
Somewhere between the ceremony, their dance, his confession, and their almost-kiss by the water, it seemed that Annie had finally joined him on the same page.
Darcy’s face sobered as she stared at him. “I know I put you up to this—”
“You did no such thing,” he argued. “I’ve been spending time with Annie because I want to. All you did was ask me to show her around Seattle and I’d have done that anyway, okay?”
“I only want for you to be careful, okay? Careful and realistic.”
